It may seem odd, but one of the joys of
this job is being proved wrong. Or rather, wrong and right at the same
time. Or rather... well... When Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig opened this spring, I
decried him as too often writing about the anguish of perpetrators of
harm, more or less to the exclusion of their victims’ hurt. In one
sense, that is still true of his In
A Dark Dark House: thirtysomething Drew (Steven Mackintosh) and
in particular his elder brother Terry (David Morrissey) are awash with
temptations and guilts of varying hues.

But a dimension is added by repeatedly shifting our perspective as to
which is the real bad guy, the one with the truly heinous personal
dossier. Indeed, they often seem to be competing to be the bigger
screw-up; especially in the last of the three scenes which compose this
100-minute play, they seem constantly to be trumping one another, with
a series of admissions which would be implausible if we stopped to
think rather than being so successfully engaged in re-evaluation. It is
true that both brothers are also victims, having grown up subject to
abuse both sexual and violent from differing quarters within and
outside the family. But this unambiguous victimhood is merely where the
moral switchback begins, as Drew, under psychiatric evaluation before
sentencing for some unspecified while-intoxicated offence, asks Terry
to corroborate his testimony about the childhood sexual abuse. From
that point on, the brothers’ respective collections of skeletons in
their closets are attempting to out-rattle each other.

But whilst dem bones click-clack, the audience is uneasily quiet
through Michael Attenborough’s production on Lez Brotherston’s lush,
verdant set. The silence is almost tangible during the second scene, in
which Terry and a putting-green manager flirt dangerously with each
other... the unease arising from the fact that she (lithe, coltish Kira
Sternbach) is 15 years old. Morrissey is masterly here at showing
little and allowing our apprehensions to fill the gap. The same is true
of the script: in the final scene, the mere mention of a tree-house is
enough to raise our goose-bumps, although in fact it is a feint which
plays out in an unexpected direction. LaBute refuses to be easily
dismissed, and I’m glad I was wrong. And right. Or...